Therese Coffey: I am sorry but I have many points to get through and my hon. Friend will recognise that we are dealing with a devolved responsibility. If I have time at the end of the debate, I will take his intervention.
We are clear that everybody, whether they are a householder or a business, is responsible for disposing of the waste they produce correctly and not passing it on to somebody irresponsible. As more than two thirds of all fly-tipped incidents involve fly-tipped waste, all householders have a role to play. That is why we are actively considering what measures could help with these matters. We did strengthen the Sentencing Council’s guideline for environmental offences in 2014. Since then, the level of fines for organisations found guilty of fly-tipping has risen, but fines for individuals have not seen the same increase. I want to ensure that the level of sentence matches the seriousness of the incident and is an appropriate deterrent to stop fly-tipping, as my hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot and for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said. As I mentioned in the House recently, I am raising this matter with colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and we intend to work with the judiciary so that sentencing levels act as an appropriate deterrent.
I am pleased to say that the Environment Agency has worked in partnership with several local authorities in south Devon to prosecute individuals fly-tipping indiscriminately across the area. Earlier in the year, the Environment Agency and local authorities successfully prosecuted a serial fly-tipper. The perpetrator received 20 months in prison, and was fined £7,000 for this  illegal activity. The vehicle used for fly-tipping was also seized and crushed. By the end of spring 2018, the Environment Agency and local authorities expect to prosecute a further nine large scale fly-tippers across south Devon, and there have been a number of smaller prosecutions by local councils.
Local authorities are responsible for enforcing against most fly-tipping, although larger-scale and more serious fly-tipping incidents are investigated by the Environment Agency. It is the role of my Department to make sure local authorities have a full range of powers and tools to enable them to tackle fly-tipping, but it is the responsibility of local councils to use all the powers and tools available to them. Last year we gave councils in England the power to issue fixed penalty notices for small-scale fly-tipping. More than 56,000 such notices were issued against fly-tippers last year, and more than half of all local authorities have implemented the new fixed penalty notices since they were introduced in May 2016. I would again encourage all local authorities to implement them, in order to have a more proportionate and efficient alternative to prosecutions. We also recently enhanced the powers for local authorities and the Environment Agency to search and seize the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. The number of such vehicles that authorities have seized has increased by 38% since the powers were introduced.
My Department chairs the national fly-tipping prevention group, which met today at Keep Britain Tidy’s headquarters in Wigan, and one of the items on the agenda was fly-tipping on rural land. The group brings together a range of organisations across central and local government, the police, the waste industry and major landowners, such as the Country Land and Business Association and the National Farmers Union, to tackle fly-tipping across England. In this forum they share experiences and best practice. It publishes case studies and guidance on its website, which have been pulled together by group members and shared with a wide audience across the country. It is our intention to continue to use best practice to crack down on this.
We want to enhance local-level partnership working and strong collaboration between local authorities and other agencies, such as the Environment Agency and the police, and involve local landowners and communities. This is essential to the tackling of fly-tipping. The value of those organisations working together is far greater than the sum of their parts. I will take away and follow up with the Department for Transport the point about evidence and the issue of the DVLA sharing data. It is absolutely key that we do that. We have seen some really good examples of partnership working. In Hertfordshire,  the police and crime commissioner has enabled the county council to set up an effective group that is starting to see results. We continue to work through the national group to share best practice.
I am particularly aware of the difficulty that fly-tipping poses to the farming community. As I have said, any type of fly-tipping is unacceptable, and it is absolutely key to prosecute fly-tippers and recover the clearance costs where possible. We also need to make sure that councils provide advice and guidance on measures that can be taken to prevent further fly-tipping. We are working with the NFU and the CLA to increase the reporting of fly-tipping on farmland. That will help local councils to better target their enforcement efforts.
I welcome the CLA’s five-point action plan to tackle fly-tipping. My Department is already taking forward most of the CLA’s points. As I have already mentioned, we are reviewing sentencing, promoting partnership-working and considering a potential penalty notice for householders whose waste is fly-tipped. The NFU’s recent rural crime report, which covered the prevention of fly-tipping, was a welcome addition to the work in this policy area.
The increase in fly-tipping incidents shows that we cannot be complacent about fly-tipping and that we still need to do more to tackle it. The drivers of fly-tipping are varied, and we need tackle it on a number of fronts. As part of the resources and waste strategy, we will develop a strategic approach to further tackle fly-tipping and all elements of waste crime. As part of that, we will review the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime to do more to try to ensure that those who are part of that trade fully understand their duties and responsibilities and do not fly-tip waste while acting under the veil of legitimacy. We will explore how extended producer responsibility might help to decrease fly-tipping, and we are absolutely clear that we want to enforce appropriately the regulations on waste electrical and electronic equipment.
As I said, we are working with various organisations to tackle fly-tipping. I attended the waste crime industry roundtable earlier this year, and we will continue that engagement. This has been an important debate and I am happy to meet hon. Friends to discuss this matter. I assure them that the increase in incidents to more than a million a year is a clear indication that we need to do more, and we will, so that our beautiful countryside can be enjoyed by future generations.
Question put and agreed to.
House adjourned.